Learning to Fly

erry Siegel and Joe Shuster didn't know that they were actually creating architecture when they came up with Superman in 1938. That debut issue of Action Comics, its red-caped hero lifting a car over his head and repelling bullets with his pecs, was a sensation, no denying it. That first issue sold hundreds of thousands of copies over numerous printings and Superman pushed Action Comics' circulation above 1 million issues a month by the time World War II started. Shuster and Siegel didn't create superheroes, but they did create the catalyzing figure in comic book history, the archetypal mold that is at the heart of everything that followed in the medium.

Superman was more than that though. He was a scaffolding, a house whose function outside the world of comics wasn't realized until nearly 50 years later when people started making video games. Superman's origin story and all the comic book origin stories that followed gave long-form video games their structure.

Take Superman's origin and make it a game; all of it, the good and the bad, fits snugly into the structure established by modern single-player video games. Take just the broad story strokes and slap them in a game: The last son of a dying planet is sent to Earth as an infant where good-hearted Samaritans raise him to be a good man. They discover quickly that he's no mere child, but is gifted with abnormal strength. Here you've got the makings of an introductory cinema sequence that will play nicely as soon as you hit the start button. That leads smoothly into a tutorial to teach you about the way the game is played. Press "A" to make Superman help Pa Kent lift that busted tractor. The origin story is narrative justification for the game and an easy way to teach you how to play.

It's more than that though. The classic comic book origin story isn't just a structural foundation, but a base to build a soul for a game. Gravity Rush stands out amongst the myriad games about supernaturally powered characters in that it's explicitly a comic book-style tale. Amnesiac protagonist Kat wakes up into the world of Heskeville without a clue who she is and she sets out into her very own playable origin story. Rather than rely on awkwardly directed story sequences between the action, the story is presented in comic panels.

Her first act is saving a boy who's being dragged up into a storm over the city, and just like readers slowly discovered back in the day that Superman could leap buildings in a single bound and outrun a train, players learn the ins and outs of Kat's abilities as she does. Kat's realization that she can propel herself through the air by reorienting her personal gravity comes with instructions for you to use the Vita's trigger buttons, but you also get to share her sense of wonder and awe. This is one of many ways that video games took the structure of the comic origin and turned it into something wholly different, a shared, active experience rather than a passive one.

Gravity Rush director Keiichiro Toyama (Silent Hill, Siren) recognizes the inherent allure and power of the comic origin story. "Regardless of the talents and circumstances that we're given, the fact that you might wake up one day with a special power is the fascinating part of origin stories," says Toyama, "These stories are especially attractive for boys and girls when they're still under the suppression of childhood and are desperate to grow up and become independent as soon as possible." Superman captured the minds of millions back in the 1930s because people never fully lose that desire for empowerment that forms in childhood.

As described above, Toyama also recognizes the structural benefit of the origin story for play. Unlike the sources that birthed comic super heroics, from the various heroes and saints of world religions to simple folk tales, comic heroes' powers were slowly revealed. Hercules was strong as soon as he was born, but Superman couldn't fly in Action Comics #1; he could only jump really high. Kat can't just floor monsters in Gravity Rush out the gate either. As with most action games in the post-arcade era of game design, your abilities grow with time.

"Action games need to pace the speed of the player character's growth so that players can fully understand what's going on and get familiar with the game system," says Toyama, "Therefore, the game system's method of upgrading abilities and skills little by little was a natural choice. I allowed the growth of the character to be rather relaxed so that players could to take their time familiarizing themselves with this unique concept [of manipulating gravity.] In addition, at first I was going to keep the initial abilities of Kat less powerful. However there was a strong consensus that the charm of this game is the sense of freedom in floating around, and I felt that it was important for players to have it from the beginning of the game. Therefore, we've balanced the game so that Kat could use her powers relatively freely from the beginning of the game and then grow to use them with more precession and grace."

The game system feeds back into the story and the slow reveal of its mysteries. Origin stories create the context for the game's mechanical, contextual, and emotional cores. "As a developer, I needed to have the game system fit in naturally to the storyline so that the game system doesn't seem out of place as the story progresses. It was extremely important to me that the story begins in a strange city that is unknown to the player as well as Kat. This allows the player to empathize and bond with Kat as she grows and learns more about her surroundings."

Its structure gives the opportunity for slow discovery of power, character and setting, but also motivation. The origin answers not just who, what, and how the character is who they are, but also why they are who they are. Superman's a hero because the Kents taught him to be a good man. In a good game like Gravity Rush, the play and the story justify the call to heroism. "The story for Gravity Rush centers around tying together the points that made Kat into a hero," says Toyama, "The focus of the story is on Kat's journey to establish herself in a strange city and how she faces the challenges of not knowing her past and discovering her powers. By creating this shared mystery for both Kat and the player, and by focusing on how she struggles and settles in her new life, I wanted players to bond with Kat."

Superhero comics changed in the three-quarters of a century after Superman of course. By the 1960s, superheroes had actually fallen out of favor amongst readers; this was for a number of reasons, though censorship and the Comics Code in the United States were big factors. Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and the other ruffians creating comics for Marvel Comics, the still-surviving competitor of Superman publishing house DC Comics, recaptured comics' lost audience with a string of new heroes and teams. These new characters were rooted in the same supernatural antics of Superman and his peers, but their greatest appeal came from their humanity. The Fantastic Four, Hulk, Spider-Man, Iron Man and the X-Men were all characters born in this era, and while they had wild physical abilities they were also deeply vulnerable. Spider-Man's origin has him getting powers after a radioactive spider bites him, but his life as a teenage outcast growing up without his birth parents also made him exposed and relatable to the average human being. Superheroes became less like gods and more like human beings during this era of comics.

If Superman's basic origin was the concrete foundation for game design structure, the Marvel-style comic book origin story, overflowing with pathos, is the wood and steal framework. Games by their very nature need to create some kind of challenge for the player to overcome. There need to be rules to follow, especially in a long form action game. Conditions for success or failure are as essential as that steady progression of empowerment Toyama describes, so your character can't just be invulnerable. Hence why there's never been a great Superman video game. He's too strong and indestructible.

Keiichiro Toyama's previous works have been horror games, namely Silent Hill and Siren. Both games are very much about weak characters, the opposites of superheroes really, that are at the mercy of supernatural forces. But these protagonists have more in common with classic comic style superheroes than you might expect. His background made him well suited to making Kat a superhero that feels simultaneously strong and vulnerable, just like those classic Marvel heroes from the 1960s. "Believe it or not, my approach for making a horror game and [Gravity Rush] were very similar. I made sure to incorporate a superhero aspect into the horror games I worked on," says Toyama, "Harry from Silent Hill and Howard from Siren both defeat demonic monsters at the end and they are both full-fledged heroes in that sense. What's important is to depict the human side of those superheroes so that users can empathize with them. It's imperative to show that superheroes are still human beings just like us. They would show extraordinary courage when they need to protect their families and friends; but at the same time they would feel terrified when faced with horrific enemies."

Gravity Rush finds its vulnerability in a classic comic trope: The empowered artifact. It can be anything, a person, a stick, whatever the creator's mind comes up with. Iron Man's armor keeps shrapnel from piercing his heart, and a magic word transforms the boy Billy Batson into the ultra-powerful Shazam. "In Gravity Rush, the main rule that governs Kat's superpowers is the fact that the powers really belong to Dusty the cat and she must draw from Dusty to utilize them," says Toyama, "This rule itself adds a bit of mystery as the source of Kat's powers is not her own. There are some scenes in the game where Kat suffers from the absence of Dusty or him being sick. By experiencing the time without superpowers, you appreciate it even more when you get them back and truly feel the powers you have."

Gravity Rush is an excellent game, which makes it rare. Most creative works, whether they're games or comics, aren't particularly good. What's most strange about the legacy of comic book origin stories in game design is that while that legacy informed great games like Gravity Rush, it hasn't made for many great games based on actual comic books. Take 2004's Spider-Man 2 for example: The wide-open New York City for Spidey to web-sling around makes you feel like Spider-Man, but why would punching criminals slowly unlock new moves for the hero? Why would his webs suddenly be stronger after a series of fights? The sense of progression necessary in a game suddenly feels arbitrary when it's free of the origin context.

Game developers are getting better at this. Batman: Arkham Asylum, and its sequel Arkham City, strike all the right chords, even using Batman's origin‚??a child witnesses the murder of wealthy industrialists and decides to devote his life to fighting crime‚??even though it's widely familiar to create moments of weakness and open up new play opportunities in the game. Those two games are exceptions amongst years of bad superhero games though. At this point at least, it's the skeleton for story that Shuster and Siegel built back in the 1930s that is most useful for game design, not their character or his descendants.

Anthony John Agnello

Anthony is a writer living in New York whose work has appeared in Fast Company, Edge, The Gameological Society and many other publications. His great hope is that someone makes a game that looks and feels like upstate New York and that the game will be Klonoa 3. He owns two beaches and likes long walks on cats. Follow him on Twitter @ajohnagnello.

Comments (2)

The Gameplay Standards

I will say this about Video Game Adaptions of Existing Heroes: It's always the standard mold of action games that kills them. They need the sense of progression and the Combat Challenge. Things that always feel out of place for existing Characters. Spidey, Batman, and Superman have great stories that usually don't have tens of mooks involved before they confront the villain. Yet all adaptions follow the standard model of Video games and Falter in most fans eyes. The Darkness made those non-combat scenes more important and Batman manages the task of making the fights and the progression fit the narrative rather than shoe-horn them in. All I'm saying is the idea of what a Super-Hero game can be needs to be seriously redesigned so that those characters own their games, rather than the Video Game simply having a recognizable character.

This is a stretch.

How many game designers say "I was inspired by comics"? As opposed to any other medium like the literature that comics borrowed from in the first place? Still a good article, but it overstates its goals.